Frederic John Eppling, “An Overview” - LNS46 Symposium: On the Matter of Particles
EPPLING: I'd like to make three introductory remarks. First of all, it's certainly a pleasure and honor to talk about LNS on this occasion. Secondly, I'd like to thank Lee Gratzens, Gene Flanagan, and the staff of our headquarters office and Bates for all the effort that is going into this. And third, I haven't timed this talk, finishing at about 10:00 or 11:00 last night. So Peter, I think the limits are probably going to be somewhat greater than 4.6 minutes, somewhat less than four to six years. It will have to move ahead at the rate of about a year a minute. So let me begin.
I remind our visitors that the work at the laboratory is fundamental study of the atomic nucleus, its makeup, and the forces among its various constituents. The laboratory was announced December 19th by Carl Compton, named Gerald Zacharias as its first director, and really got underway in 1946. Here we have Gerald, Mack, Hubbard. The fellow that's missing is Ralph Krauss. And I was a young Navy lieutenant and over in Building 20, working with ONR at the time. And when Zach, Mack, and Ralph came over to see you, you know you had real problems in your hands.
Zach's formula for success, in its most simplistic way, is get the best, give them the best, give them their head, and the best will result. If we take a look at the laboratory, it was a inter-departmental laboratory, programs in physics and chemistry. It's objectives, education, training, research all pulled together with the strong support of Central Facilities, both administration and technical. In fact, from one of Zach's early talks, he was interested in trying to get nuclear and particle theorists to talk to each other, which he did, the nuclear and experimentalists talk to each other, and then these groups also talking, all embedded in a framework, tied together with technical and administrative services.
The laboratory had an initial structure very similar to what we now see, with a steering committee, advisory committee, a directorate, programs in physics, chemistry, engineering, and again, tied together with a strong administrative and technical facilities. Its initial scientific program covered theory, cosmic rays, physics, and chemistry, engineering, a modest budget of a million a year or so, 2 MeV Van de Graaf, a 7 MeV cyclotron, but with more to come.
Here I have a listing of the so-called Planck participants, a Navy term to indicate those that were here initially. It reads like a who's who of MIT at the time. Those with a p after their names represent those that have undertaken major responsibilities in the laboratory. The ones with an asterisk are those that are still with us. I think Martin, in talking a bit, said that I think he is the longest member of this group at MIT, being here some 56 years.
Of course, a laboratory such as this needs support. This was the first proposal submitted to ONR. And as you see, it was a very modest proposal at that time, amounting to some $3 million for equipment, and about a million each for nuclear science and nuclear engineering support. We even had hopes of a building at that time. This is now the site, I think, of Building 16, which never quite came to pass. If we take a look at the campus in the early years, I won't count up the number accelerators, but if we had that time we'd find eight. There were five Van de Graffs, the one cyclotron, one synchnotron, and one LINAC.
And here is Mass Avenue, Vasser Street. We were concentrating in this part of the campus with our headquarters initially in Building 20. In fact, our shops are still here. And occasionally we would have a bit of fun at Christmas and get together with RLE and LNS, both in Building 20, and at the Cambridge Boathouse. And for those with good eyes, you might spot a young Viki Weisskopf and Bernie Feld on this occasion.
Let me jump ahead a bit. The ONR contract lasted about 12 years. And at that time, [INAUDIBLE] from AD Little conducted a study. And let's see if some Zacharias' initial objectives were met. Zach was into everything. I mean, we undertook projects. Charles, Hartwell, and Lamplight was national defense. Many people were trained-- 78 PhDs, 1,000 senior theses, new knowledge, new companies. And I go back here to certainly some of the early publications. In fact, I went to my library-- it's in the basement at home-- and found copies of Blatt and Weisskopf, at one point said the most stolen book in the MIT library. [INAUDIBLE] and Studies of the Atomic Nucleus by Robley Evan, and many others.
And what I'd like to do, in terms of describing their work in the laboratory, I do it in terms of a tree. And the initial tree we have here is sort of black and white, rather stark. Through the help of Ashley [? Wodkey, ?] the MI group secretary, and her Macintosh, we were able to put together a tree such as you see right here. Now for a tree to thrive, it has to have strong roots, you have to be able to prune it. And let me just call attention to some of the roots.
And I'll just try to categorize these here. The leadership has certainly been superb. It's been my great pleasure to work with all of these physicists, men through the years and certainly I found in so doing each one of them a very warm human being. If we take a look at the physics faculty, students and LNS staff, I categorize this by excellence and highly motivated, Our central facilities by dedication.
MIT-- very strong support. You look at this $14 million, that's 14 million in an account. And that gave us certainly another dimension in terms of solving logistic problems. This goes back to the days of George Harrison, Dean Alberty, Vice Presidents Tom Jones, Al Hill, Dean Brown, and Bob [? Bergeno. ?]
Then this root right here is certainly very, very strong. Primarily one contract, some $450 billion of government money, has come into the laboratory, starting with ONR and then moving off to the AEC, [INAUDIBLE], DOE, and with help along the way from OSR and NIH. And here again we were, I think, very fortunate in being able to work with men that were real professionals, physicists going back to the days of Paul McDaniel, Jim Lease, Bill Hess, Bill Wallenmeyer, John O'Fallon, Bernie Hildebrand on the hydrogen side of the house. And on the nuclear side of the house, George Colstat, Clarence Richardson, Dave Hendry, and others. At times they would give us a very-- they come to, usually a once a year, for a review of our work, would give us a hard time, but at the same time, would work with us in solving problems. So we have a very, very strong root structure.
Now in terms of looking at these branches, where should I begin? Let me start with cosmic ray physics. I categorize this, for those of you that like the out-of-doors, as fun physics. And if we take a look at this particular branch, Bruno came to MIT in 1946. And you'll hear some of the details from George Clark. But he brought with him the four horsemen, Bridge, Thompson, Williams, Matt Sands. And starting in the mushroom caves, you might think of the cosmic group as just moving out towards outer space. They had experiments at the Cosmotron, giant airshow experiments in various parts of the world, balloon flights B29 flights, satellite flights. And then about 1961 they moved to the Aegis from the nucleus of the Center for space research.
Let us take a look at some of the things along the way. Nuclear emulsions were used very early on. In fact Bernie Feld went to England and came back with techniques that the laboratory used, both in B29 flights and here on the surface of the Earth. Here we have a cosmic ray particle interacting and forming a star. And of course, some of the questions you're asking yourself are what are the cosmic rays? What is their makeup? How do they interact? Where do they come from? And these are some of the questions that this group was attempting to answer.
Here we have one of the early devices, a high-pressure cloud chamber, where we have a rare event, the death of a cosmic ray meson coming down through this plate, dying here, forming an electron, and the neutron goes off here. These were devices were taken to higher altitudes, to the cosmic ray station at Echo Lake. Many interesting stories here about our Central Facilities people going out and installing things, coming down the mountain with Bill Smith, a hair-raising adventure, but all of them safely reached the bottom. Then we have [INAUDIBLE] developing the multi-plate cloud chamber. And here we have a cosmic ray particle interacting in the plates of this chamber, forming a shower of particles.
About 1953, the group moved to the studies of air showers and giant air showers. Here you'd like to learn something about the energy of the primary ray. They'd like to learn something about this direction of arrival. So as it comes down through the atmosphere, you have a wave of particles. And in order to detect what happens, you have to set up your detectors over a rather wide area. And you have to have fast electronics if, indeed, you're going to catch this wave as it passes by.
So where could we install such an experiment? Remember George Clark and I travel up and down the eastern seaboard trying to find a place. We went to Squantum we went to other places, and finally settled at the Harvard Observatory site at Harvard Mass, where initially something like, I believe, 15 detectors were installed out there, the diameter of about 3/10 of a mile. And with a detector consisting of a flammable fluid, benzene, with terphenyl added for scintillating properties.
Many interesting things evolved around this experiment. One of the first, of course, you have cables coming back and the mice and the squirrels would continually attack the cables. And then, shortly after the array was put in operation, I think about three or four days, there was an intense electrical storm. One of these caught fire, and I remember riding back into our car with the Vice President Reynolds from Harvard, Bruno. Bruno, his head in his hands, because at that time they detected one of the highest energy cosmic rays ever seen, about 10 to the 18th electron volts. Reynolds was saying, Bruno, you got to get that off my property. I don't want you to burn down the observatory.
Then we had old man Sage, Nat Sage's father, who was a crusty old Colonel heading up the DIC, Division of Industrial Cooperation, at that time, talk to Reynolds. We got a repeat, and then we had to try to fireproof this array as best we could. And here the laboratory really joined forces. We went out with shovels, barrels full of sand. Peter and I had the job of developing a snuffer, a tub snuffer, so that if one of these caught on fire, the tub would drop. Many interesting fires across the parking lot in Building 20, with the MIT safety office watching sympathetically. The array was put back into operation. And it went on for about, I'd say, three or four months.
And during that period, we developed inflammable material, polystyrene disks, the largest ever developed to replace the flammable benzene. And indeed, the old Smith was the one responsible for these. These were built in the gas turbine lab, again across Vasser Street. Somebody from MIT told me, gee, if that burns down, you'll be doing us a favor. I remember many mornings walking up the street and getting this strong whiff of polystyrene as these things were being cooked.
Then these moved out to the Volcano Ranch site near Albuquerque, New Mexico, with John Linsley, Livio Scarsi. Peter and I would visit this site. These were a much larger array to try to really probe further out and detect primaries of higher energy. And if walking with John, he would lift one of these covers and there might be a rattlesnake there. Nonchalantly, he'd pick it up, throw it out. And of course, Peter and I would quickly move to be sure it didn't land on us.
But in the middle 1950s, the late 1950s, John detected probably what at that time was the highest energy cosmic ray of its kind, about 10 to the 20th EV, which, because of its energy, indicated it must be coming from outside our galaxy. These were moved then to Bolivia. The BASJE experiment at Mount Chacaltaya at 18,000 feet and along the way. Some of our graduate students had interesting times during revolutions, spending their time in the cellars of [INAUDIBLE].
And then on to balloon flights. You want to probe up, get up higher into the atmosphere. So this was done. Here we had such an array going up. The flight might last about five hours. The package might move about 25 miles. But you'd like to get up higher. More complicated instrumentation was developed, bigger balloons. And these would go up to altitudes of possibly as high as 130,000 feet, with about 10 million cubic feet of gas. And I think some of the early reports of flying saucers were the sun reflecting off quite such as this.
Then into outer space. Here is a Faraday cup, the plasma probe of Bridge and Rossi. Here we have them taking a look at it here in the laboratory in Building 26. This was flown on Explorer 10, I think, in the early 1960s and gave us information about the solar wind and the geomagnetic environment close to the Earth. Then you'd like to probe the matter density of the galactic halo. This you can do by means of gamma rays, [INAUDIBLE] and share, developed this package, which was then flown on another satellite.
And then in conclusion, I'd like to say one of the things that this group did was really involve physicists all over the world. A strong component from India, from Italy, from China, and Japan. So that briefly is the work on cosmic ray physics.
Then let us go back to the tree, and let us see what branch should be looked at next. Before doing so, I should point out that in the early years, there were very strong programs in nuclear chemistry in the laboratory, fission element, organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry. [? Shianna ?] Swain, Correll in Irvine, Roberts, George [? Scatchard. ?] And also, there was this little branch right here, starting off for the design of a nuclear reactor in the laboratory. Because of its size and complexity, this work was moved into the Department of Nuclear Engineering about 1951. The first reactor was completed about 1958 or so. It was a five megawatt water-cooled reactor. It was upgraded in the '70s. It still continues today doing forefront basic research in the life sciences and physical sciences.
Looking at the lower energy branch, we see right here. Look at the proliferation of accelerators. We have a 2 MeV Van de Graaf 4 MeV, the ONR generator, because ONR sponsored it, the Marco cyclotron, the radioactivity center under Robley Evans. Much interesting work, full body dosimetry, radioisotopes, the study of long term effects of radium poisoning in individuals.
The radioactivity branch here under [INAUDIBLE] and Martin Deutsch. Many things happened here, the discovery of positronium, [INAUDIBLE] effect work, nuclear energy levels, decay schemes, and what have you. And then when all of this was finished, this coalesced into a heavy iron group, Steve Steadman, Rob LeDoux, Eric Cosman, Herald [INAUDIBLE], moving off to work at Oak Ridge, then to Brookhaven, initially at the Tandem, AGS, and hopefully with RHIC.
Let's take a few minutes to look at some of this work. Here is where the Van de Graaf work started, at a table top in Princeton. It was the world's first Van de Graaf. This was constructed at the Round Hill site, Round Hill, Mass, about a 2 MeV machine. It was brought to MIT. And some interesting work, early work in elastic and elastic scattering of electrons. And Herman Feshbach played an important role in unraveling some of the theories around that. Then we say, in terms of accelerators, the AEC has a book that tells you how long an accelerator should exist, 15 to 20 years. They're either recycled or they're scrapped. In this case, the machine was recycled to the Museum of Science in Boston.
Then we have the 4 MTV Rockfeller generator. It did some early interesting work in what we call the wolf whistle effect, where electric field of the proton, without smashing into the nucleus, one was able to produce excited states and study nuclear structures through that method.
And then we had plans for a 12 MeV Van de Graaf. This was installed in the early 1950s in Building 58. And schematically, what we see right here is the machine, beam of particles, protons coming down, interacting with the target, being magnetically analyzed, and depending upon their energies, focused on this focal plane, and then leaving their presence in terms of little tracks and the nuclear emulsion. And here we had large scanning groups, concepts tracks. It's a distance along the plate giving these peaks. And much of this work was energy-level work. It was probably one of the world's most foremost facilities at the time, and all aimed at a better understanding of the nucleus.
Buckner, as you see right here, and [INAUDIBLE] spent many, many days and weeks developing new instrumentation. And here you have one of the spectrographs they developed, the multi-pole spectrograph. And then in parallel, there was a lot of work going on at MIT in the laboratory at that time by John Trump. John developed several Van de Graafs. This one was used to study the properties of materials, the properties of gases to improve the Van de Graaf as a research tool. Also he developed an electron Van de Graaf for studies in the irradiation of deep [INAUDIBLE].
Here we have the Markel cyclotron. This came into being in the early 1940s. And initially it was a 7 MeV proton machine used for the production of radioisotopes, and then for nuclear studies. And with Sandy Weill and Aaron Bernstein, developed a lot of very fine instrumentation to be able to use the proton, deuteron, and the alpha particle beams from that machine. Here the cyclotron lay dormant for a number of years. Really, it was just a pile of junk. But then this was resurrected by one of our high energy groups under Olrich Becker. He wanted to use the magnetic field for gas studies for muon detectors for high energy work. We even had plans for a tandem, but that was scrapped in favor of the LINAC.
And then, of course, the very interesting series of experiments by Martin Deutsch in positronium, where you have a positron, electron come together briefly to form an atom of positronium. And this was certainly one of the, as I see it, one of the very important achievements, and then studying the properties of positronium.
And then, with all of these accelerators dying, we coalesced the ONR generator group, radioactivity group, into a heavy ion group. And now just look at the complexity of what you see right here. This is experiment E802 at Brookhaven, spearheaded by Steve Steadman to study heavy ion beams of oxygen, silicon, interacting with gold targets. And also, as far as the future is concerned, under [INAUDIBLE] we and Steve and Bernie Wadsworth, we hope to do experiments at the RHIC heavy iron accelerator at Brookhaven in the late 1990s. In fact, a proposal will shortly be submitted for the PHOBOS detector [INAUDIBLE], where we hope to study new forms of matter, the [INAUDIBLE] plasma. So that is the work in nuclear physics.
Now if we come to medium energy physics, I can categorize this by excellence on a shoestring. Let us go back to our tree. We take a look right here at this branch. And this, to me, is one of the amazing branches of the tree. Starting in Building 20, when that work was finished, moving to RPI, NBS, Saskatchewan. And then about the mid-1960s, the bringing online early 1970s of a 400 MeV LINAC. And here one could tell all sorts of stories. I remember in the office when Peter was talking with Paul McDaniel and saying, look, I've got to have $7 million for this accelerator. And Paul said, look it, that's my entire budget. I'll give you half. And I think that's been the name of the game, sort of living with half all along, but coming forward with a very, very remarkable forefront facility.
The first LINAC was finished about 1972. And then along the way, it was added a second area that was equipped a re-circulator. And now the South Hall Ring, which will give its one GeV a CW capability. Should be finished in about a year or so. I think of a Satchel Paige that said that look at, that if you're running a race, don't look back. Somebody is liable to be catching up. I think that's what we see right here, that Bates has always been running, and due to the supreme-- and I would say tremendous-- leadership of Peter Deimos, Ernie Monas, and now Stan Kowalski, they are running, never looking back, and in the process have developed one of the world's most foremost facilities.
Here is where it all started in Building 20. This is the 7 MeV LINAC, 21 magnetrons, a World War Ii radar tube, phase so that this beam of 2 MeV electrons is accelerated down to an energy of 17 MeV. And much interesting work on photo fission, photo production of neutrons, time of flight studies with Peter Diemos, in fact, had a take a year off from graduate studies to bring this machine into being. Phil Sargent, Wilbur Tozzi, Bob Dabbs, and many others, Ying Halpurn involved in the early work.
Here we have the dates as it is today. And I just mentioned a few things. The initial machine was right here. The re-circulator was here. The initial machine included a north wall. One then added the capability of a polarized [INAUDIBLE]. The south hall came into being, equipped, and now we have the south hall ring right in this area right here. And you'll hear more about this from Bill Turchinetz and others. Here's a picture of Bates as seen from the air.
And here we're looking down the LINAC. And again, some interesting stories. When this tunnel was first developed, it was about 600 feet long. Here's the injector right here. I remember walking down it with Peter, Bill Turchinetz, I think George Colstadt and a few others. Jake Haimson, Paul Reardon was probably there also with us. About six to eight inches of water, mud, sludge, because up on the hill there was a reservoir with some five million gallons of water that continually seeped down. Jake was shaking his head and saying, my god, how can we ever build a machine in here? How can I bring my my waveguides into this area? And George also was interested in neutron time of flight, and said, gee, where's my neutron time of flight hole? So we got some other workers to bore a nice hole. And every time George came by, said George here's your neutron time of flight hole.
And then here is the north hall, the LC spectrometer. A number of interesting stories about this. At times a physicist, I think, has to follow his gut feeling and in terms of what he wants to do. And I think Bill Bertozzi here did just this. And one of the elements were the pole pieces. He wanted to use a form of a nickel steel, which had only been produced in small pieces. He thought that by doing this would give him a high-resolution capability. Many people said, Bill, don't do it. He went ahead and did it. And I think now we have, again, one of the world's finest instruments here in the north hall , extremely high resolution.
And in the south hall, we take a look. Here are some of the MEP spectrometers, OHEP spectrometers that you'll hear more about. And again, magnets are recycled. Here we have the Princeton pen magnets. These are being used for the-- in the south hall ring.
And then what is it all about? This came from a little note I found in some stuff I got from Bill Lobar. What goes on at Bates? It has some 80 to 90 people. Experiments are approved by a program advisory committee. And a typical experiment takes 200 to 300 hours. And the breadth of physics is just, to me, mind boggling. Nuclear structure [INAUDIBLE], quasi-elastic scattering, photo production, coincidence experiments, polarization experiments, just a breadth of superb physics.
And then the LINAC and its staff continue to run. They're not looking back. Here we have an autoplane spectrometer that is now being worked on. And they have a proposal in the works for a blast 4 pi detector, which would certainly enable them to really use the capabilities of the South Hall Ring and its polarized internal targets so that is the field. We have highlights on our medium energy program.
Now let's go to high energy physics. And I call this life away from home. See, how are we doing? Not too bad. Going back to the tree, here we find just many, many things. You find green shoots, brown shoots, things sprouting, things leaving. The work in the laboratory started in Building 24, the 300 MeV electron synchrotron. Then to CEA. And then to Brookhaven, to the AGS, to the Cosmotron earlier. Then DESY Hamburg, discern.
In terms of our current program we take a look at we're now running an experiment with collaborators at the CDF facility. Jerry Friedman is the spokesperson [INAUDIBLE] and others. We are winding down work at our SLD detector at the Stanford Linear collider. And I'll mention that in a moment. We have a vigorous program with Ting at L3 at the LEP accelerator facility. We are engaged in some generic R&D for new detectors, through Min Chan and Olrich Becker. And we haven't-- we're part of the GEM collaboration looking forward to doing work at the SSC. So in this area, certainly, much is going on.
Let us take a look at the early years. I'll remind our visitors once again that what we're taking a look at now is certainly the elementary particles of the nucleus, possibly sub-elementary particles. And all of this started here in the laboratory in Building 24. But before doing, I would like to, with apologies to Henry Kendall, our physicist mountaineer, point out that in my opinion, some of these experiments are like climbing a mountain. The logistics has to be there. Planning and schedules are very, very important. The group has to be highly motivated. And occasionally, even though you have good backup and excellent techniques, for reasons outside of your own province, you may not reach the top.
Here, we have the MIT synchnotron 300 MeV electron synchnotron. This is a picture of Sergeant Jain's and some early experiment. Just think-- simple. Here's what we call the snow maiden, a tube filled full of pressurized hydrogen to study the photo production of mesons. A little bit more complicated experiment-- in this case to study the production of mu plus mu minus pairs. None were seen.
And then on to CEA in the early 1960s. This was a joint Harvard-MIT affair. Ring about 240 feet in diameter, 60 GeV electrons, sandwiched in between the Divinity School and the Harvard physics department. Much interesting work went on there. Now we have-- this is Moby Dick, a single-arm spectrometer that Louis Osborne and collaborators built for the photo production of new and unusual particles at CEA. Here we have a device called a bubble chamber, and Dick Yamamoto, Larry Rosensen, and Irwin Pless. A number of these were built in the laboratory. This was a heavy liquid chamber. Then on the-- just getting ahead of my tail a bit. Here we have what a particle coming into such a chamber looks like. See these tracks.
Now one of the problems that developed-- we also spearheaded work in spark chambers-- is how do you analyze all this data? A continual problem in energy physics. And Irwin and his group developed the PEPPER device. Martin developed SPASS for the analyzing of data from the spark chambers.
Then on the morning of July 5, 196, I got a call from Louis Osborne saying CEA is on fire. And when I got to CEA, here is what I saw, certainly great devastation. And looking at the experimental area, one saw this. As you imagine, there was a investigation by the AEC. They determined that, with high probability, what caused the fire was the rupture of beryllium window in the 500-liter hydrogen bubble chamber.
Following that, I must say that the laboratory joined together like it probably never has and probably never will again. One young technician died as a result. There were seven injured. And we all work together at the hospital to try to do what we could. One young man spent a year in the hospital, came back to MIT, got his BS, got his PhD, and just certainly a figure of a supreme courage. CEA was rebuilt, the bubble chambers rebuilt out in [INAUDIBLE] at a B&M railroad siding. One had to-- certainly between pigeons dropping and what have you, one was able to get it all together. Went to argon, there was a budget crunch, and it was never run since.
Now let me take a look at sort of moving out, moving from on campus to off campus. Instrumentation simple to complex, collaborators-- few, complex. Pandering work had slack. Jerry Friedman, Henry Kendall, and Dick Taylor where they discovered deep and lasting work, that the proton and neutron may have substructure called quarks. And for this, apologies to Jerry. We have him receiving the Nobel Prize about 2 and 1/2 decades later along with Henry and Dick.
And a pioneering experiment at Brookhaven using a double arm spectrometer at the AGS facility with high resolution. The j particle was discovered [INAUDIBLE] Burt Richter at roughly the same time. This resulted in a Nobel Prize to Ting. And then at a-- I show this because of historical interest, that a celebration held in the [INAUDIBLE] room. Because here you have some of the directors of LNS, Jerry Friedman, Martin Deutsch. Here you have Arthur Kerman, Viki, Herman, and I think Viki giving Stan a little bit of advice.
Then on to Fermilab, larger experiments and getting more complex. This was one that our counter-spark chamber group worked on for neutrino studies. Let me just show you this picture that shows you one of the problems you have getting data out. Look at these thousands and thousands of cables, a very, very tough logistic problem. And along the way, in that experiment the world's largest proportional chamber, series of chambers, was developed due to the ingenuity of this feller right here, Tommy Lyons. And then on to Mark Jay at DESY, some of Sam Ting's work there, which resulted in the finding of the jets and the gluons. And the gluon, the carrier of the strong force between the quarks, was discovered there.
Then onto the ISR at CERN. This is UA 1, where [? Revole ?] and his group were working with Ruby and others. And through the analysis of pictures such as you see right here, the W and the zebra discovered. And then the Gran Sasso, the world's largest underground laboratory in Italy, where Irwin Pless and Martin Deutsch and others are engaged in experiments. Taking a look at some of the highest energy cosmic rays to see if new phenomena can be discovered, looking at solar neutrinos. And here is Irwin one of his frequent visits to Gran Sasso.
And then moving on to some of the large detectors and large accelerators. And here we have colliding beams coming together, matter changing into energy, back into a matter, where known and new particles hopefully are looked at. We were heavily involved at the SLD detector at slack. The counter-spark chamber group hadn't had a major commitment in the warm ion-- developing the warm ion calorimeter. Here you get some idea of the size of these giants and the complexity of the infrastructure. Is that right? Yeah. And even an event showing these series of jets.
We then are doing work at the CDF detector at Fermi lab and at the L3 experiment in Geneva, a worldwide effort. The laboratory has spent a lot of time and effort on this in the management side of things. The DOE has put in for the first phase something like $42 million through LNS, and with the second phase something like an additional $10 to $12 million. It was the first collaboration between Europe, the USSR, the US, and China. And meeting these physicists and working with them is certainly a great pleasure. The machine was immense, about 16 miles around.
Here we have the Geneva airport. And many of us-- I figured I've landed and taken off the air about some 80 times, and round trips covering some 500,000 miles. But that's not unique. You'll find all of our high-energy physics as do that today. They're away from home. They're landing out in the West coast, at Brookhaven, at Geneva, at DESY Hamburg, and it's just a way of life, at times a very tough way of life.
Here you have the L3 detector. Here's a man. You can see the huge size of this detector. And to give you a better feeling, here are magnet coils about four stories high. And looking down, here you have the support tube and looking into the magnet. And here are the-- see if I get this right-- the magnet doors. And occasionally you find yourself popping-- first of all, I should mention that that experiment is running. Here is a possible Higgs candidate, the Higgs being presumably responsible for a mass of some or all of the elementary particles. You'd like to get more of this kind. So the Higgs search is on.
But occasionally you find yourself in rather interesting books. The L3 magnet found its way into the Guinness Book of Records. More steel than the Eiffel Tower, something like 8,000 tons. One problem you had with a huge collaboration like that is names on paper. So here are the names on the first couple of papers. And this led to the cartoon look at this article on Z0 decay. I'm listed as one of the co-authors.
Then onto the SSC, the Superconductor Supercollider, some 53 miles around, being built in Waxahachie, actually Texas. How are we involved? Certainly at this machine, you are now looking at hopefully with its energies in the 20 TeV range, possibly the makeup of the quarks themselves, new phenomena. You're looking at certainly now huge detectors where you don't put a person down here, but now you have to put a dump truck to indicate something about the size of these detectors.
Well, several things-- if I can see it in a very trite way, you win some and you lose some. The laboratory through the counter-spark chamber group had an impact proposal, Ting through Elle Star had a proposal-- I should say, a letter of intent. Both were rejected. But physicists being physicists, we now find our counter-spark chamber group was part of the GEM collaboration, Gamma Rays, Electrons, Neurons. And here is a schematic of that huge device. Here is a person right here. And Ting and his group are engaged certainly at work at CERN and looking forward to doing work with the LHC, if indeed that new machine, the large electron Hadron Collider, is approved.
Now let me take one last look at the tree. And I can't forget, certainly, theoretical physics. Here we have just green shoots. Scintillating, stellar I would describe that work, going right back to the early days. There was a center formed. Hermann Feshbach, Arthur Kerman, John Nagle, and others. But supreme leadership, indeed, according to Zacharias, the nuclear and particle physicist theorists have interacted not only among themselves, certainly with the rest of the laboratory. You can see some of the directors and some of the things that they have done.
But I think in each physicist, there's probably a little bit of the poet and artist, so we asked John Nagle, John, can you do a little bit about embellishing that branch? And again, with the help of the computer, here is what John came forward with. And it just attempts to illustrate some of the many, many things that have taken part at the Center-- doorway states, collect emotions, strings, nuclear structure and forces going back to the early days the bag model, the MI probes of nuclear hadron's anomalies, and certainly work on the inflationary universe, baby universes, and what have you. And then of course, putting it all together is this early photograph of Viki, which certainly is where this group started, and with Hermann's being strongly involved.
Now in my best and last comments, where are we today? Structure of the laboratory as basically this, and not too unchanged from what we saw 46 years ago. Its budget has climbed to about a level of around $30 million a year. With that, of course, the paper work has gone up. Here's one proposal to the DOE about 70 pounds that we issue every spring about this time. We take a look at the campus and we ask, where are the accelerators gone? We're now concentrating our efforts in Building 24, Building 26.
And one of the things in talking with people about the laboratory, this matter of fluidity. In talking with Larry Rosensen about some of his work on, it can really forward that indeed one of the strengths of the laboratories that physicists move around, groups change, coalesce, reorganize. That has been one of our great strengths over the years. Then, at times we all work under pressure. And I'd like to say-- just pay my compliments to those in our Central facilities and our compatriots at Bates-- Bill Lobar, Sheila Dodson, Gary Nixon, and others over the years who have certainly worked under great pressure.
I show this to these gentlemen are no longer with us. This was taken at the time of Ting's celebration. History turns on trivial chances often as momentous tides. Sometimes the dragon wins. And then from Viki's book, if one takes a look at his paperback, what it's all about, and certainly the acquisition of knowledge. And I wonder, I think, that goes with it.
And I'd to conclude-- I think you won't mind reading a poem from his recent book that I think somehow puts this all into perspective. "Joyfully a patient lover, mankind's eager spirit strove to unravel and discover how creative nature wove. It revealed that one eternal essence permeated all, in the grains of shell and kernel, at the heart of great and small. Always changing, and yet holding things together far and near, shaping endlessly, unfolding. To behold it, we are here. OK, thank you.
[APPLAUSE]